I can’t find much information about Highlights anywhere. There’s no programme. The description online and in the Fringe programme just quotes what Google tells me is Kanye West’s song ‘Highlights’. The BATS website doesn’t have credits for crew, though it credits Lauren Byrne and Emma Martin (presumably the names of the two dancers who perform the show) where the production company’s name would normally go.

The Fringe programme credits the production company as How About Now, who I couldn’t find anything about and who are probably one of those companies that appear and vanish in one Fringe. I could find no mention of any other crew anywhere, so my best guess is that either the dancers did the choreography and conceived the show, and the only other crew is the lighting guy, or that the rest of the crew wished to remain anonymous. If it’s the latter, then I can guess why.

Usually when I go to a show I’ve read at least a description on the theatre’s website, so the lack of contextualising information is quite interesting and adds to the experience. If you’re planning to see this, just stop reading after this paragraph, know that I recommend the show, and come back once you’ve seen it.

The show expertly balances dances of intense, sometimes exhausting, energy with quieter and more relaxed though no less skilful scenes. We open with a projected video featuring the stars of the show: two dancers with no trousers and really long shirts, the colour white, the colour peach, loud melodic electronic beats, glitter. 

That glitter is everywhere. When we enter, there’s glitter laid out in a square on the Dome stage. Over the course of the show, a triangle pointing at the audience and the world ‘sparkle’ above it is drawn by the dancers in that rectangle. Those shapes are then broken up as the dancers smear the glitter all over the place.

They cover themselves with glitter, they roll and writhe in it, they sprinkle it on their bodies and on their faces, one of them puts it in her mouth. They sprinkle it in the air and it has an amazing glimmering effect in the stage lights. It’s the biggest technical juggling act in the production. They produce glitter from packets (including a container from a Kinder Surprise egg) in their clothes and from plastic jugs at the side of the stage. The show is in large part about glitter.

It’s also about movement. Byrne and Martin are impressive dancers, and they create interesting shapes as they move across the stage, from the rhythmic strutting of a sequence set to the sound of a clock just after that video-projection opening to energetic dancing set to Fly My Pretties’ ‘Mud and Stardust’ to the aforementioned glitter-smearing contortions.

The soundtrack includes quite a bit of R&B and hip-hop, such as Frank Ocean’s ‘Nikes’, Kanye West’s ‘Fade’ and a remix of Drake’s ‘Started at the Bottom’. There are several notable quiet and silent parts, many of which are occupied by the laying-out and sprinkling of glitter. The dancers are also very impressive in their arrangement of glitter (I realise that that’s an odd sentence).

This is an entertaining aesthetic exercise and I commend the people behind it, whoever they are. Shout-out also to the child who went onto the stage after the show was over and did a little dance in the glitter.

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